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>Session 3: Cicero
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>DIY
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> DÉCLARATION COMMUNE du 30 octobre 2001
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>Proposition Jean Stern (lettre HB 4/24.1.03)
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>US President Bush declares war on Iraq: War declaration speech in full.
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>UN RESOLUTION 1441Document
>Fragments from NEW RULES, NEW ACTONOMY
By Geert Lovink and Florian Schneider. Reorganized by Cicero Egli
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>Session 3, Cicero
Transcript
>Session 1, All Members
When I consider the keywords of the blackboard, I think we got to some of these ideas. I don’t have the overview, some approaches are recognizable, such as with Aurelien, related to the institution.
I went through the UN Resolution text and I tried to get out what I feel about it. I thought it was the most accurate for the moment, and most accessible for me to bring into a discourse, particularly linked to the institution and reform… There are two things that interested me. One was the idea of this total free mobility of the inspectors, which the text demands. Which is abstract in a sense - like I was asking in my first transcripted talk, who has restriction, who has mobility. I selected a section according to that. The second was the terminology and the vocabulary of how this text was shaped. To me, it is patronizing and a sense of hopelessness, at least now in this situation we have, it looks one way. It seems abstract because I don’t see the dimension of the human catastrophe and global index that is a consequence of the following actions. In this case, I underlined the terms, the vocabulary. There is a totalizing sense to the vocabulary but doesnt cover anything, it is emptiness.
I look at it, isolated it as a document isolated from its context, and make the link to it. I consider the closures and checkpoints that happen in many levels, the control points. This document takes away borders and frontiers and have total unrestricted movement, but on the other side, what seems to be more happening is the contrary, more borders, checkpoints, and frontiers of all kinds.
How does this document which is demanding free unhindered movement, then reflect the immigration question, the right to move around freely. Some people have the right to move, one part of society, another is more and more restricted – what happens about refugees now, created by that same document.History versus this document. The global issue. The UN and the alliance can actually work on another side of the globe and to fulfill their intentions. When it is not abstract it is right now, when the bombs are falling, that is no longer abstract. How I feel it from the point I am, it is a question of legitimacy, of interventions. I wanted to go the source text because I can hear it on the radio countless times, but I wanted to see it, what the document looks like. And when I look at it, comparing to the media information, it is even more abstract than what the media gives. An image of some two people shaking hands is even more concrete, a plane and military installations seems even more concrete. The codes build up a rationalized discourse.
I think the UN document is accessible, I thought it would be much more complicated. I think they take these people as simple. I expected much more, especially from such a document. Because it is so powerful, so decisive, and the amplitude of it is so large. What can come out of that… I don’t see that in there. I didn’t see the implicit threat of war in this document, it is not the moment of course, but according to the media, this would be the main point. This is why it seems to be abstract maybe, because it is so famous, 1441, but it doesn’t have anything to do with what is happening now.
In comparison to Bush’s declaration, the two documents don’t seem to be related, he seems to be in another world. This is why I would rather stay on the level of what I receive from the media as an average citizen, not as a researcher, as somebody who has a radio, newspaper etc..
I saw the comparison as I mentioned, in relation to the historical reformers. I wanted to find more in the beginning as to how the alliance intervenes in Iraq, what they want to do after this. This was the first idea to link it to the declarations of reforming the school here.
What do people want to establish after they accomplish – what is the operating script.I felt that Bush doesn’t have really some idea, because there is no alternative party, nothing to build with there in Iraq. So I couldn’t find anything about this, and instead I went to these documents of the process… that is abstract because of that.
In relation to the school, in Geneva this is the only school that doesn’t follow the standards HBS. An operating script. Medical, Applied Art, Fine Arts, Technical, and Commercial. The people of this school formed a committee against it, because of what is lost, in terms of freedoms for the students. The fee would be raised, the hours would change, more fixed schedule. Duration of the whole school period would be shortened. This was not acceptable in the Fine Arts school, that doesn’t relate to disciplines per say that are achievable. So the committee found the formula was developed, of four years of normal and two years of postgrad. There was to be one director over Fine Arts and Applied. This was abandoned, due to opposition. So to some extents.
I was interested in the way how humanitary and political aspects, not get eaten by the system, how to find parameters to be able to keep up resistance. What is the multitude, freedom of expression and equality of people, not two-class system - everyone can go the school now. With the new system, if you don’t have your abbeteur you can’t get in. I wanted to find out what these two reformations share, on macro and micro level. In the historical reformers, there was a huge foundation of morals. It has an impact of Geneva, it is a very strict, old fashioned city, which I see based on the reforms that then set up a code of morals as well, which we still feel now. Does that perhaps also now show up in the institutional changes or opposition, in a functional analysis. I make a link between the reformative cities, like Zurich and Geneva, and the capitalist system development. They are both large banking cities, I think there are parallels. I don’t have an overview. As far as I know, the reformative movement and the church have links to the first banks.
In Zurich … demonstrations is an old fashioned thing as well. It is important for me, also violent demonstrations, because that implies change. In Geneva there aren’t big demonstrations, these things happen or Bern, or Zurich because there is a bigger left wing scene. You have the different organizations here, and they demonstrate to the UN but it is always smaller, very specific addressed to this abstract house, you only see flags. I see potential in street reclaiming. An idea of working with a direct alternatives. I saw more sense of it, on the other hand demonstrations, when I go, I like the sense of direct fight, against the authorities, it is fun, but it is on the other hand the most anarchist way to the authority who is defending the state. It always ends up between the cops and the demonstrators, and what is under attack… what we try to break the capitalistic monuments that demonstrate their power, like banks, security companies. The demonstrations bring diverse groups of people, the syndicates, kurds, black block, non-politicized who just show up. Each situation is different, what is shared is the address a common protest. There are divisions in terms of violence. It brings the issue of moving the mass and being determined as “the mass”, and where is the individual expression, or individuality in this. But I think sometimes I see there is an efficiency in one way, on the other hand, it is about raising consciousness, and once they are mobilized maybe the receive information differently, and organize. Humans feel power when they join together, there is confirmation. There is something about being among others, in large number, and they are willing to physically come there and risk something together. People are willing to join on some issue in a physical. It is questionable, these mass movement things in regards to for example, fascism, as Benjamin says politicizing the art and not aestheticizing the political. But a demonstration is a mass aesthicization of the political, in that it is representation in a particular way, in the cities, in the streets, it suggests a parade - but what happens it could be a carnival – but then it becomes even more aesthecized, to get the people. The polarization is between the festive party and the black block that fights the police. a
I think we have to go beyond the demonstrations and giving content, and consider the work of creating networks, information, and such that when they go back home they can use this sense of mass feeling but turn it into something motivating, as Benjamin points out it would be related to the media, so it is important how it is politicized, which is what I see the work as.The scale of demonstration is where I arrived because I have to concretize, because only theorizing does not get anywhere, in that I don’t have the capacity to work in just theoretical part, I think that my work is trying to be concrete, it is a fight to be concrete as I love too much to be abstract, but it doesn’t bring anything. It is interesting to me to work from my (thesis/memoir) (my written work) to something concrete – reading deleuze is fascinating, but I can’t handle it as it is not concrete for me. I try to link together my theoretical fascination for the abstract, and life, especially in the political. I read this sense of actonomy, from autonomy to do it, apply it. For me it is important.
The job of the rules is to provide an enlightenment for the people who are willing to do stuff, by removing some of the morals that block. A real alternative 70s communist or alternative person, would maybe refuse to take money or profit. This is tactics against that. I see this as I was in the indymedia meeting, they are using the ideologies. I see this in terms of what I understand as hybridity. For me, it is new attitude.